National Minimum Wage Increase

[good96]

With the NMW increase from April 2025 rising to £12.21 - for someone who works 40 hours a week - that is £25,400!

Can see so many businesses struggling/restructuring/redundancies after this!

Unskilled doesn’t mean they have no skills - it means that they don’t have specific, trained skills. So our skilled workers have specific, certified qualifications, which our unskilled workers don’t have.

We also have unskilled workers NOT on MW because they have abilities that they bring to our business, or what we have trained them in. They receive a salary based on those abilities and experience.

It just happens that our MW workers are also unskilled.

It should come as no surprise that in general, if you have in demand skills, you can command a higher wage, and if you want to earn more, you have to take qualifications or target better paid industries.

“The OBR said in the longer term investment, planning reform and greater economic stability should help to boost growth, "in a sustainable way"

From the BBC. Like I said, this is for long term sustainability. We can’t keep having silly little short term budgets like the Tories did. That’s why we’re in this mess. We need long term sustainability that brings back confidence.

I think all that will really come from this is redundancies.

I work in veterinary. A profession where historically skilled staff (RVNs mainly) are paid pennies because businesses can. Most are owned by large corporates who would rather make redundancies than pay staff fairly. A typical skilled and qualified worker in practice is on around £13-£14 an hour (excluding vets)

Now the unskilled members of the team are going to be on the almost same amount but doing a job that doesn’t include any of the skill, professional accountability or stress. There’s been a lot of discussion yesterday about what the point of it is and I agree. By the time tax hits most of staff are coming out with nowhere near enough to live.

Yes, everyone could get a mythical higher paid position but who then does the work.

There’s almost no chance of the business increasing wages without cuts because the corporates claim they need to pay shareholders before the staff…they will get rid of who they can and pile the work on the remaining staff instead.

Council tax will have to rise significantly in order to meet the shortfall in money for social care as this will increase as a result of these changes in NMW and NI. We'll all be paying for it in the long run.

It's the same for dental nurses and public sector admin and lab staff. A few years ago they'd all have been earning 30-50% above NMW but now they're needing pay rises just to keep up with NMW.

It's a good thing that the work is often more interesting than truly unskilled work because for many, they'll be able to earn the same if not more for much easier jobs.

My company announced last week that it was struggling with overheads. Now NMW is going up it will definitely mean redundancies. It’s been confirmed by SLT already.

I am quite worried. I am job hunting but the market is flat here. Reminds me of 2010 era

(on the plus side, I can now accept any job whatsoever and bring home a very very decent wage!)

It’s a bit weird

That may be true of your business, but there are many people on NMW who do have qualifications, are trained, and in jobs which are "in demand", for example child care workers. I doubt the nursery I work in will survive this anyway.

@hamsterchump

I was wondering what your thoughts were on the confirmation today the the rise in NMW will be met through a combination of :
Lower profits for SME and
Lower wage rises for employees

Also the IFS comment that the rise in NI for companies will raise £9 billion less than Reeves stated:

"It will result in lower wages, reducing the amount raised from employer NI and reducing employee NI and income tax revenues. That takes the net revenue down to some £16bn."

My point is about these on going scare stories, the opponents of the NMW cried that 1m jobs would be lost... didn't happen, employment went up.

People with higher wages, spend more, that benefits business overall.

If a 6.8% pay rise for your lowest paid workers is going to drive you out of business, then you didn't have a sustainable one to start with.

Its already pretty much impossible to get nursery provision in many parts of the country, EU childcare workers, among plenty of others, don't want to come here who caused this?) and UK workers can earn more elsewhere, wage rises or closures were inevitable.

@Alexandra2001

But it's been admitted that the rise in NI for businesses will result in lower profits for businesses and lower wage growth for employees.

But we simply don't know this yet.

Plus, in Hunts Nov 2023 budget, he cut employers NI and made permanent "full expensing"

I do not believe Reeves has reversed this.... (but she has had to find a way of funding it) so are they actually, overall, worse off now than they were pre nov 2023?

Did employers pass on these cuts to employees? ..... Did it lead to higher wage rises or unemployment falling... Nope.

Read my update yesterday regarding DH’s business. 60 people will be made redundant. It can only be a viable business going forward because it will now employ less people. It’ll then be sold to a large firm who will then amalgamate roles. Even less people will be employed.

So yeah, do continue to tell us all from your armchair how things are working out in the real world since the budget announcements.

@Alexandra2001 oh, and have a look at the Sky interview with a Business owner this morning who broke down live on TV. He rightly points out that the large corporations who run the gig economy will remain completely unaffected...

When Labour is brave enough to stand up to the Amazons and Metas making huge profits and contributing nothing to the society they leach off instead of targeting the Rural Economy and SMEs, maybe I'll listen to what they have to say. I thought they were lying through their back teeth about taxation during the election campaign and so far I haven't seen anything to suggest I was wrong.

Oh, and the '£22bn black hole' is not even a figure the OBR recognises.

So less than 4hrs after the budget, the decision made to lay off 60 people and sell the business, you posted at 19.38hrs yesterday.

What did your company do with the cuts to business NI last November? how did you cope with a 10% rise in NMW last year? & the new rate wont be in for another 5 months....

@Netjets OBR says 9.5bn but that they weren't given the full figures, so their forecasts are all wrong.

Hunt proposed to slash benefits to pay for his cuts in NI, he didn't fund nurses/teachers/military pay rises either.

Cutting benefits, much like closing tax loop holes rarely gets us the promised savings.

There's your black hole....

It's not my Business. As I said previously it is in a sector which was expecting support in the Budget yesterday because of issues created by the Government itself. None was forthcoming. As any business-owner will know if you are operating in a sector experiencing difficulty you are constantly putting expenses under review so you now how much you can stretch resources by. Yesterday was the final nail in the coffin. The Parent Company will now withdraw from the UK Market and invest elsewhere. That is their prerogative and as a listed company in another country they have shareholders to answer to.

In terms of last year, not many in the sector made a profit - most operators can sustain some level of loss but not continually - including DH's. Nothing yesterday led anyone in the sector to think that anything will change in the coming couple of years. The world isn't all like the Ocado model where there is a limitless supply of funding when no profit is actually being made....

It's not 'my' black hole. But if I were chancellor and was aghast to have discovered that I was '£22bn' in the red, would I have given the green light to giving train drivers a 15% pay rise...? No. It's about choice. Labour has made theirs but there are many consequences to those choices and they need acknowledging. The Conservatives undoubtedly would have chosen different ones (not all of them good) - but I think I could say with some degree of certainty they they would not have targeted the rural economy.

Well, its 15% over 3 years and the amount paid ensured no more strikes, the previous strikes are estimated to have cost the economy 3X what the final settlement is and affected growth too.

So you would have continued the strikes? costing far more... sensible.

The changes to IHT on farms is around 300 million, that is hardly "hitting the rural economy"

Yes the Cons would have targeted those with very little, the disabled, the poor, those stuck in housing with shit landlords.... they did chose to shelve their renters reform bill.

I'm not 100% behind the budget, however, what did strike me was the emphasis towards getting the UKs public services back up again, thats a huge shift from the last 14 years of austerity, which is why nothing works in the UK anymore & investment in new tech may bring growth & they ve finally decided to bring HS2 into London, something that should have never been in doubt..... this is their first budget and i suspect there will be more changes to facilitate growth and investment..

From what you say, the sector your DH is in, was already in trouble as a result of previous Govt actions?

I think you are showing a lack of understanding about the impact on farming - pretty much like Rachel Reeves and the rest of the cabinet. Only the foolhardy would place a direct target on the nation's food security. It isn't 'just £300m' if you look closely (which Labour absolutely doesn't want you to do).

The sector DH's business is in has been in trouble because of decisions taken by the last administration AND this new government. Lots of talk from the new shiny people wanting to demonstrate their 'power' only for it not to come to fruition. And the sector hugely affects the environment. So a double whammy.

Labour have attacked the less well-off. Winter fuel payments for one. And austerity was unfortunately required because of the absolute carnage left by the last Labour government. No one was in favour of it. Ask anyone in the NHS what the issue is, and it isn't a lack of money as the sole root cause - it is the lack of having anyone with clinical knowledge being able to direct it to where it is needed most. If you don't think that GP Practices will fold because of the burden now placed on the employer, you are very much mistaken.

HS2 is a train wreck - literally. No one 'needs' to get to Birmingham/Manchester from London 15 mins faster. London isn't the centre of the Universe. The north needs urgently cross country rail routes to improve. Ever tried any method of travelling between Leeds and Manchester? The situation is dire whatever mode of transportation you use, but especially transpenine rail routes. Andy Burnham this week has taken Northern Rail bosses to task about the situation in Greater Manchester alone...and this is a re-nationalised company - so I can only see HS2 costing even more and achieving even less.

Oh, and ASELF and the RMT have both called for strikes in November, so I don't think that paying the 15% did in fact 'ensure that there were no more strikes' 😉

That's a big chip on your shoulder. This reads like someone who has never worked in the private sector or set up a business or run business or even spent a nanosecond thinking about the economics behind balance sheets. I mean all those business owners are rolling in money.

They are too busy with their snouts in the Lord Ali trough and being courted by lobbyists for the big global corporations - piece in yesterday's Times about Shein getting its chief in front of Reeves through one of her adviser who works for FSG - to give a fuck about SMEs. Labour has always hated rural (aka traditional) communities.

I guess since the Alli gravy train has stopped they are worried about who will pay for their clothes, glasses, parties, holidays, etc etc. Maybe the CCP will pony up some cash instead.

THIS WAS A BUDGET FOR THE PUBLIC SECTOR BY THE PUBLIC SECTOR AND UNIONS.

There won't be much growth, other than to the NHS's budget but that will make zero difference to productivity. Ha, in about 2 years there will be more civil servants working for the MoD than personnel in the Army and the RAF so they really better keep on sucking up to China.

Triggered much? 🤣🤣🤣

I seriously think your DH is not very good at running a business, if what's been announced in the budget is resulting in him instantly making 60 people redundant. Maybe it's time for him to call it a day. Sell the business, and let someone else take the wheel.

Or maybe you could actually read my posts.